Not the OP, but I'm 51 ;-) This week I'm writing some logging code for about the 1 millionth time. Logging is fascinating. What's the best way to do it? Global variable? Send a parameter to basically every function? And then when you log something, you need a time stamp. Where do you get it from? Do you insert side effects into virtually every function? Do you have any choice? It's amazing. I can write it a hundred different ways and I have no idea which way is best. How do I get past that?
Every day is the same. If you want to search for novelty, it's the fact that it is the same problem and it's been broken from the beginning of time. So do something else! But what? That's what drives me.
You can't dally, either. It would be easy to just spend a year logging (and probably get nowhere). But you can't do it in a job. They won't stand for it. So what can you do in your few minutes of leeway? What difference can you make? You aren't going to fix it, so how can you extract just a tiny bit more information so that maybe someday it will all click?
I think most people don't care about this stuff. Programming is inherently boring. You need to care about insignificant details to really get deep into programming, I think. I mean, it doesn't really matter. Global variable, passed parameters. It sucks one way or it sucks the other way. Who cares? Only crazy people, probably. But in my opinion, that's where the fun is.
Every day is the same. If you want to search for novelty, it's the fact that it is the same problem and it's been broken from the beginning of time. So do something else! But what? That's what drives me.
You can't dally, either. It would be easy to just spend a year logging (and probably get nowhere). But you can't do it in a job. They won't stand for it. So what can you do in your few minutes of leeway? What difference can you make? You aren't going to fix it, so how can you extract just a tiny bit more information so that maybe someday it will all click?
I think most people don't care about this stuff. Programming is inherently boring. You need to care about insignificant details to really get deep into programming, I think. I mean, it doesn't really matter. Global variable, passed parameters. It sucks one way or it sucks the other way. Who cares? Only crazy people, probably. But in my opinion, that's where the fun is.